Headbands and fringe required! The light show is about to begin! Everyone drop now!

Psychedelic rock is a style of rock music that is inspired or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It often uses new recording techniques and effects and draws on non-Western sources such the ragas and drones of Indian music.

It was pioneered by musicians including The Beatles, The Byrds and The Yardbirds, emerging as a genre during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues rock bands in United States and the United Kingdom, such as Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream and Pink Floyd. It reached a peak in between 1967 and 1969 with the Summer of Love and Woodstock rock festival, becoming an international musical movement and associated with a widespread counter-culture, before beginning a decline as changing attitudes, the loss of some key individuals and a back-to-basics movement, led surviving performers to move into new musical areas.

Psychedelic rock influenced the creation of psychedelic pop and psychedelic soul. It also bridged the transition from early blues- and folk music-based rock to progressive rock, glam rock, hard rock and as a result influenced the development of sub-genres such asheavy metal. Since the late 1970s it has been revived in various forms of neo-psychedelia.

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In this drama, Paul Groves (Peter Fonda) takes his first dose of LSD while experiencing the heartbreak and ambivalence of divorce from his beautiful but adulterous wife, played by Susan Strasberg. He starts his trip with a "guide," John (Bruce Dern), but runs away and abandons out of fear.

As Paul experiences his trip, he wanders around the Sunset Strip, into nightclubs, and the homes of strangers and acquaintances. He considers the roles played by commercialism, sex, the role of women in his life. He meets a young woman, Glenn (Salli Sachse), who is interested in people who take LSD. Having learned from Paul recently that he would be taking LSD, she has been looking out for him.

Glenn drives Paul to a beach house, where they have passionate intercourse. As the sun rises, Paul steps out to the balcony to get some air. Glenn asks him whether his first LSD experience was constructive. Paul defers his answer to "tomorrow." His face is frozen in close-up, and his image cracks like glass through an animationspecial effect.

The Trip also features Dennis Hopper as Groves' dealer Max, who appears here with Fonda in a precursor role to Easy Rider (1969). Contrary to their characters in Easy Rider, though—and for obvious reasons—Fonda's Paul Groves acts paranoid and anxious in The Trip, while Hopper's Max appears calm and collected.

Corman wildly edited some scenes for The Trip, particularly the exterior night scenes on theSunset Strip, to simulate the LSD user's racing mind. The Trip features photographic effects, body paint on seminude actresses to lend atmosphere, and colorful patterned lighting, during sex scenes and in a club, which imitates LSD-induced hallucinations. Finally, Corman included inscrutable fantasy sequences including one where Fonda is faced with revolving pictures ofChe Guevara, Sophia Loren and Khalil Gibran in a wildly lit room. For no apparent reason, a midget riding a merry-go-round in the background blurts "Bay of Pigs!!" The story plays over a musical backdrop of improvisationaljazz, blues rock of the band The Electric Flag, plus an exotic musical score with an organ and horn-drenched theme.

Jack Nicholson wrote the original screenplay. Corman encouraged Nicholson's experimental writing style and gives between 80 and 90 percent credit to Nicholson for the shooting script in the director's commentary appearing on the DVD of this film. Corman slightly modified the story to stay within budget.